KINETIC ART
Early
experiments with movement in art began between 1913 and 1920, led by artists of
the Dadaist and Constructivist traditions. Perhaps the earliest instance of
kinetic art was Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel (1913), which consisted of a
wheel inverted on a stool (the piece is also recognized as the first
"readymade" sculpture). In 1920, Constructivist artists Naum Gabo and
Antoine Pevsner used the term "kinetic art" in their Realistic
Manifesto. And, later, Bauhaus artist Laszlo Moholy-Nagy used the term
"kinetic" to describe the mechanized movement of his piece Light
Space Modulator (1930).
Although artists used the concept of kinetics intermittently
for several years, it was not until 1955 that it was established as a major
artistic movement, when the group exhibition Le Mouvement was held at Galerie
Denise Rene in Paris. Central to this exhibition was Victor Vasarely; his
so-called 'Yellow Manifesto' was published at the time of the show and came to
serve as one of the movement's founding documents. Vasarely had been trained in
Bauhaus ideas and had spent many years working in advertising. The graphic
designs that he had initially used in advertising formed the substance of his
new style. These took the form of a grid-like arrangement of black and white
that produced a flickering effect. His style quickly attracted followers such
as Bridget Riley.
But other aspects of Le Mouvement, those involving real
movement as opposed to optical illusions, began to attract the interest of
artists across the world. This movement could be effected by air or touch, as
in the case of Alexander Calder's mobiles: his Arc of Petals (1941) combines
subtle lines and biomorphic forms with natural movement to examine the behavior
of an object in space. Or, as was more often the case, the movement was
mechanized. Nicolas Schoffer's desire to introduce a sense of dynamism to his
geometric Constructivist sculptures initially involved merely lending them a
complex sense of space. But he eventually introduced mechanized movement to
these works, which he called Spatiodynamic sculptures, and this led to his
interest in fusing electronics and art.
The Kinetic art movement emerged out of what was widely
perceived as the decline of the tradition of geometric abstraction in the
post-war period. A legacy of Constructivism, De Stijl, and the Bauhaus,
geometric abstraction had initially been associated with revolutionary
attitudes to art and society. Its austere and conceptual language of lines and
flat planes, and simplified color palette, made it seem appropriate to the
modern world. The philosophy that grew up around it also encouraged the belief
that it might provide a language in which art might filter into everyday life,
decorating everything from architecture to ceramics. But as these hopes
receded, geometric abstraction came to be seen as a somewhat academic art form
concerned with little more than old-fashioned notions of composition.
The Kinetic art movement represented a revitalization of
that tradition, by utilizing mechanical or natural motion to bring about a new
relationship between art and technology. The movement introduced Kineticism
across several forms of art, including painting, drawing, and sculpture, but
many of its artists aspired to work with ever newer and more public media in
order to bring Kinetic art to a wide audience. Kinetic art also drew heavily on
the Dada movement, which had inspired some of the earliest examples of kinetic
art, such as Marcel Duchamp's Bicycle Wheel (1913) and Roto-Reliefs (1935-65).
The motivation for these was less an interest in uniting art and technology
than in breaking with the conventions of the traditional static artwork.
Instead of the experience of the artwork being entirely determined by the
artist in advance of exhibition, Kinetic art objects suggested that movement
and the viewer's own impression of that movement - something out of the
artist's control - was more important. Indeed the Dada tradition brought to
Kinetic art a skepticism about the value of technology in modern life. Jean
Tinguely's amusing self-detonating construction, Homage to New York (1960), is
typical of this skepticism, since the mechanical contraption ultimately
destroyed itself in a violent performance of sound and light. Dada and
Surrealism also informed the work of another prominent kinetic artist,
Alexander Calder. His mobiles, such as Arc of Petals (1941), used the natural
movement of the air to animate an assortment of biomorphic forms. Rather than
use movement to suggest modern technology, he used it to conjure a wistful,
calming mood, one that suggested a happy union of nature and humanity.
